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How does gentrification affect the poor
How does gentrification affect the poor
Analysis of harlem
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Revitalization of Harlem & Chicago In society we live in today many African American urban neighborhoods are being revitalized. Neighborhoods such as Harlem NY and Bronzeville Chicago have been known for their crimes, drugs and poverty. Over the years, both of these neighborhoods have had a tremendous transformation. These two ghettos have taking on expensive restaurants, health spas and chic boutiques. This made it hard for low income families to maintain a living space. Usually, given a urban renewal meant displacing the people who already lived in the neighborhood. We will began to see how the redevelopment of Harlem and Bronzeville forced low income residents to be removed. Harlem is a large neighborhood located in the New York City
Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project is notorious in the United States for being the most impoverished and crime-ridden public housing development ever established. Originally established as inexpensive housing in the 1940’s, it soon became a vast complex of unsightly concrete low and high-rise apartment structures. Originally touted as a giant step forward in the development of public housing, it quickly changed from a racially and economically diverse housing complex to a predominantly black, extremely poor ghetto. As it was left to rot, so to speak, Cabrini-Green harbored drug dealers, gangs and prostitution. It continued its downward spiral of despair until the mid 1990’s when the Federal Government assumed control the Chicago Housing Authority, the organization responsible for this abomination. Cabrini-Green has slowly been recovering from its dismal state of affairs recently, with developers building mixed-income and subsidized housing. The Chicago Housing Authority has also been demolishing the monolithic concrete high-rise slums, replacing them with public housing aimed at not repeating the mistakes of the past. Fortunately, a new era of public housing has dawned from the mistakes that were made, and the lessons that were learned from the things that went on for half a century in Cabrini-Green.
Prior to this, I had never heard of any benefit of gentrification; rather, I had the typical preconceived notion that Freeman discusses: gentrification is a demonic force that inflicts suffering in all poor people in a gentrified neighborhood. However, reading excerpts from “There Goes the ‘Hood” encourages me to rethink my position. One of my questions from the reading pertains to the “race” part of the author’s argument. Although Clinton Hill and Harlem are both predominantly comprised of African Americans, I wonder how low-income white residents feel about gentrification. I am curious about this because a friend of mine, a white Irish, was displaced from her home in Sunnyside, Queens last summer because of increasing rent. From this experience, I think that seeing low-income whites’ outlooks on white gentry would be interesting. Furthermore, I question the validity of the author’s selection on some of the participants for his interview, particularly those whom he recruited in a conference on gentrification (page 12). One could imagine that community members who attend such a conference would hold strong opinions about gentrification. However, would not this contradict his earlier point that “the most active and vocal residents are not necessarily representative of the entire neighborhood and are likely different” (page 7) and thus undermining the integrity of some of his
...ll. The inner city has many complications the fact that most are African American is a mere coincidence. If we as a nation are capable of fixing all institutions and structural issues we could bring the slums out of poverty. The cycle of unemployment and poverty is a terrible cycle that cannot only be judged by race and cultural values. When reading this book keep in mind the difficulties, any family or person could go through these tribulations. There are many arguments and sides to each problem; this is another one of those. The battle for inner city poverty, and the factors that go along with it, has not been finished. Wilson brings out a different aspect which could help people expand horizons and come up with better solutions.
There has been a tremendous change in East Harlem between class warfare and gentrification. East Harlem is one more economic factor to the city’s wealth per capita since the attack of September 11, 2000. It is Manhattan’s last remaining development and it is on the agenda of the tax revenue of our government. East Harlem has become a profit driven capitalism. Gentrification enforces capitalism, it does not separate people, it does not go against race, poor and the working class, it wages war on the poor and the working-class.
Newark began to deteriorate and the white residents blamed the rising African-American population for Newark's downfall. However, one of the real culprits of this decline in Newark was do to poor housing, lack of employment, and discrimination. Twenty-five percent of the cities housing was substandard according to the Model C...
In the 1920’s, investors were concerned with attracting the white, middle-class woman shoppers and repelling African American shoppers. When property values crashed during the Great Depression, white investors used racial discrimination to defend their property values rather than including those individuals to boost sales and business. By the 1950’s suburban areas were growing with white middle-class citizens and the usually poorer, nonwhite customers from nearby residential neighborhoods permeated the downtown areas. White people began to fear that the slums were taking over the prized but depleting downtown areas. According to Isenberg in her collection of studies in Downtown America, “To many downtown investors, the prospect of serving poor, nonwhite shoppers was a “nightmare”, not a vision, of future urban commercial life”.2 Racial tensions grew and propelled the urgency of white citizens to push for urban renewal (sometimes referenced as ‘Negro Removal’) in order to help dictate who should be downtown. In opposition, blacks increasingly began to demand rights and access within the downtown
Although gentrification can lead to social mixing of different classes and races, this can actually worsen quality of life for the original residents of a neighborhood and lead to “displacement, segregation, and social polarization” (Lees, 2008, p. 2449). Displacement is the worst consequence of gentrification. There is data that shows a significant number of people are displaced due to gentrification. In New York City, between 1989 and 2002, about 10,000 were displaced each year, which represents between six and ten percent of local moves during those years (Newman & Wyly, 2006). This displacement occurs because of the increased property values the new residents bring with them. The original residents often cannot afford to live in their community and are priced out of their living arrangements. Even with some affordable housing set aside, there is not enough to keep all the original residents and it does not guarantee people will still be able to afford living there, considering other costs of living will also increase, such as food and other goods and services. To make matters worse, displaced residents can have great difficulty trying to find affordable housing elsewhere, which limits the resources they could be using on improving their livelihoods, such as by getting an education or investing in their community (Fullilove, 2001). This is bad not only on a moral level, but also
In his article Being Poor, Black and American, William Julius Wilson discusses the political, economic and cultural forces that have led to concentrated poverty in neighborhoods. In his work, Wilson not only explores the social and economic inequalities rooting from social policies on neighborhoods, but also the changes on the labor market and collective culture. Similarly, on my tour to the East neighborhood, I also became aware of these political, economic and cultural factors that had affected the poor regions of Oakland. These included the infrastructure buildings like the freeways, the lack of stable jobs and the collective culture of inner city families.
Gentrification is the keystone for the progression of the basic standards of living in urban environments. A prerequisite for the advancement of urban areas is an improvement of housing, dining, and general social services. One of the most revered and illustrious examples of gentrification in an urban setting is New York City. New York City’s gentrification projects are seen as a model for gentrification for not only America, but also the rest of the world. Gentrification in an urban setting is much more complex and has deeper ramifications than seen at face value. With changes in housing, modifications to the quality of life in the surrounding area must be considered as well. Constant lifestyle changes in a community can push out life-time
“The Deeper Problems We Miss When We Attack ‘Gentrification’”exhibit their opinion on the positives of gentrification and the potential of “revitalization” in low-income urban communities. Badger argues that gentrification brings nothing more than further opportunities for urban communities while integrating citizens of different social classes.Furthermore , she continues to question if gentrification is in fact the monster that brings the prior expressions against gentrification where she says “If poor neighborhoods have historically suffered from dire disinvestment, how can the remedy to that evil — outside money finally flowing in — be the problem, too?”(Badger) Stating that the funds generated from sources external that are brought into these communities can’t be problematic. This concept is further elaborated in the article “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor” where Vigdoor list the potential positive enhancements gentrification can have on an urban area in America ,stating that gentrification can
The process of gentrification, renovating and improving urban neighborhoods to suit a middle-class lifestyle, may be romanticized to many middle-class individuals, but hold grand consequences to lower-income individuals who originate from urban situations. Individuals come into a neighborhood and buy buildings and apartments to flip them to be higher-quality, thereby raising rent, taxes, and the cost of living. This neighborhood is now unaffordable to those who live there, causing displacement and erasure of urban identity. Those who decide not to move or do not have the means to move are even more impoverished because their rent is too expensive for them to afford much else. Low-income neighborhoods tend to be low income for undesirable reasons,
In the article, “The Disregarded Consequences of Gentrification in This New York City Neighborhood,” Darnell L. Moore states that “the changes in racial demographics and the social economic status of residents tend to be two of the most prominent features of gentrification” (mic.com). Many African American, Latino, and colored communities are being ran out of their houses and neighborhoods to find new homes and are being displaced with ‘higher’ people of society. In San Francisco the Mission district is home to the hispanic community; this district is packed with the hispanic culture through murals and events that happen in the streets, however, many of the generations that have lived there for fifteen years are more and being kicked out of their houses and are being pushed out into the east bay areas like Pittsburg and Antioch. In the article “Gentrification Spreads an Upheaval in San Francisco’s Mission District,” journalist, author, and editor Carol Pogash talks about the increasing rent in the Mission District due to emerging Silicon Valley techies. She mentions a story of a woman currently living in the Mission District who fought her case in court for eighteen months before winning against her eviction, but since the eviction she is in jeopardy of losing her family owned empanada restaurant because the people in her area are being ran out of their homes with no money. Gentrification is literally taking the money under this woman’s feet for the benefit of the government. In Washington D.C., where the president himself lives, the African American community has been targeted for redevelopment due to the deterioration of the community itself and the nature of the environment. In the article, “Beyond Gentrification: Hundreds Of DC Residents Being Forced From Their Homes,” author Sean Nevins speaks for the African
Harlem is deeply associated with the vibrant life of African Americans for more than a century. When describing Harlem one must recognize its aesthetic beauty of life, culture and history. Harlem is the place where musician and bootleggers lived together, poet and pickpocket ate in the same dining room and preachers, physician all were aristocrats. Looking from a different perspective, Harlem is the paradigm of a deteriorated inner city neighborhood. From end of the civil war to World War I it has experienced a massive exodus of African Americans thus transforming the demographics to an all African Community. The quality of life began to degrade as due to racism, neglect and city’s role in shaping the housing stocks. In an effort
With more affluent families rolling in, renovated buildings, and new businesses, the cost of housing increases. With the increased price of housing, many of the low income families have to sell their homes. This leads to a large quantity of families being displaced. The families displaced, depending on the location in the united states, are often African-American or Latino. The displacement of minorities has led to class division and racial division. With larger businesses appearing, many small businesses have been destroyed, causing many families to lose their jobs. With removing the prior residents, the culture they have created often is often destroyed. Gentrification is said to be the cause of the death of multiple cultures, most notably the Harlem Renaissance (Nicholson, 2009). Without any action, gentrification will displace countless
“Gentrification within cities has been attributed to an array of coalescing factors including the rise of a service economy, increasing preference for urban living, widening ‘rent gaps’, and growth of nontraditional households.” (P. Nelson & A. Oberg;2010) Gentrification does not necessarily have a positive demeanor when it comes to how the low income residents in these areas that are being affected by gentrification speak about it. To them, gentrification is just another way to discriminate and or segregate people based on socioeconomic status. “… the term gentrification within both urban and rural studies has been seen to signify a change in the social composition of an area with members of a middle-class group replacing working class residents”. (Nelson & Oberg, 2010) Before claiming that the only outcomes of gentrification are negative, there are also positive outcomes. Gentrification not only “beautifies” deteriorating neighborhoods but also bring with it other positive aspects. Gentrification brings in safer streets. “For 11 years, crime rates in L.A. have generally dropped, many argue as a result of gentrification…” (Tarvana & Simpson, 2015) For example, in Los Angeles, gang and crime activity has decreased significantly in areas that are now gentrified. Gentrifications helps with improving the economy. With gentrification comes job opportunities. The people that are